


remembering how to breathe

by alphai



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: DOTO spoilers, Family Dynamics, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-08 00:20:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14682549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphai/pseuds/alphai
Summary: We carry what was done to us through the rest of our endless days. No one asked if we wanted it.





	1. i am your last breath

**Author's Note:**

> did anyone really expect me to play dishonored and not love the void teen  
> this is going to get more complex as the chapters go on (and boy do i have some chapters planned) so just like be patient my adhd is trying its best to make me forget to write this but i really want to get it out into the world

To some, the Outsider was nothing more than a story told to children to convince them to keep their behavior in check. To others, he was a leviathan, all teeth and inky black water and rattling chains, a monster created from fear itself to drive the world into chaos. To few, he was seen as he intended to be seen, as a god who took pity the parts of the world he was able to access and used what power he had to empower those who needed him.

To Billie Lurk, he was a teenage boy who was dragged in over his head, but for the first time in four thousand years, he was finally breathing. His heart was beating. His eyes had color again.

The Outsider was human for the second time, and now she had to figure out what to do with him.

When his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he just stood there, under Shindaerey's archway. Eventually he lowered the hand that was protecting his face from the rays of light, and Billie expected him to say something, but he didn't. He turned back to look at her, that same confused look on his face.

"What?" she asked, knowing what he wanted to know, but hoping he would say it to spare her from having to.

"Where do you expect me to go from here?"

Billie sighed, pushing herself off the wall she was leaning on. Thinking for a moment, she involuntarily looked down at the ruined mess of her right arm. It was still there, still functioning, even without any dark magic keeping it from decaying.

"I hope you understand that you can't stay with me," she said, covering her right arm with her left hand and looking back at him. "Not because of what you are. Because I can't have you following me around forever."

"If you resent me for any reason, you would be justified. For your eye, your hand, for Daud—"

"I don't. We aren't going to get into that." A pause. "What was the name that he told you?"

"You're changing the subject."

"I'm not going to keep referring to you as 'Outsider' for the rest of your life. For obvious reasons."

The boy took a breath, as if he was preparing to answer her, but he fell short. His face dropped, less confused and more genuinely concerned.

"Don't tell me," Billie said, shaking her head. "You can't remember, can you?"

"Maybe there was a record of my name back in the quarry," he started, taking a step towards her and back into the mines.

"There wasn't." She cut him off, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "I must have checked every document in that place, but these people were careful. They thought information like your name was too dangerous to be written down, and I'm not waking any of them up to ask them."

The Outsider thought this over for a moment, looking in the distance at the entrance to the mines. Some realization came to him then, and his eyes widened.

"They won't live much longer without me," he said quietly. "I was the only thing keeping them tied to this world."

Billie let him go, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. Of course, she knew those people deserved whatever fate they were about to get. She was never going to lose sleep over them. It was more the idea of what else would change about the world now that the void was empty.

"So, what now?" she asked, trying not to sound worried.

He was silent again, turning back to the exit and crossing his hands behind his back as he walked away.

"I need to take you somewhere," Billie continued, following after him and matching his stride. "And I don't want to throw you out onto the streets again. You've lived that life once, and that's more than anyone deserves."

The Outsider nodded, not looking at her. "I trust you to make the right choice."

"That isn't an answer."

"How many people do you know that can be trusted with a burden like this?" he asked, looking over his shoulder in that cryptic way with that cryptic tone in his voice that Billie knew he used when he spoke one of his monologues. "It's a short list, one I know you can narrow down with enough time to think. But I need time to think as well."

Billie stopped, looking at him as he kept walking. A part of her, the part that was used to being utilized for other people's gain, knew that he was just trying to get her to do the hard part for him. She may have found the way to bring him back his mortality, but he planted the ideas in her head. He was probably planning for this from the beginning. He knew what Daud had wanted, and he knew that she would object to it, so he made sure she knew there was another way.

But he hadn't thought she would actually follow through with it, and now he was lost.

"I can think of someone," she finally said, catching up to him again. "But you have to promise me something."

"Of course."

She took another breath. "Once you're living with them, you won't try to find me again. I want to be over this occult shit. I don't want to think about magic again. I want to live somewhere quiet where I can convince myself that you're just a street kid I was able to help."

He looked at her, seeming confused again. "If you're certain of that. I was hoping I could at least write to you. Surely you can understand how grateful I am for what you've done."

"Well, don't expect that to last long," Billie muttered. "You can write to me. Magic aside, I'd want to know that you were adjusting to this world again. Hopefully it'll be easier where I'll be sending you."

* * *

Going back to Dunwall was a mistake. It didn't take an omnipotent god for Billie to understand that. Every rational faculty in her mind was telling her that there was probably a better way, an easier way, but she wanted to be rid of the Outsider as soon as possible.

It wasn't that he was unpleasant to be around. On the contrary, after a day or two of hearing his speeches, she almost started to enjoy talking to him. Back before she was taken in by Daud's group, Billie would imagine what it would be like to receive encouragement and power from the Outsider, based solely on other people's stories about him.

Now she was escorting him personally to the coast of Karnaca, stealing food and new clothes for him, and listening to him talk about the districts they passed through. He talked about each new place from a position of obvious disconnect. The affairs didn't matter to him, the important figures may as well have been fictional in his eyes. He was dissociated from this world, and understandably so.

But none of this was what bothered Billie. It was the fact that the Outsider was still very clearly connected to the void, even from here.

The two of them were stowaways on a cargo ship, finally at sea and on the way to another island. Billie's estimate put another six hours until they hit land, and she was using her remaining time to finish a letter to the only people she could think of to take this boy in.

_ To Corvo Attano and empress Emily Kaldwin, and to your eyes only; _

_ I can't explain everything, but I have recently come into contact with an old, old friend of yours. I can't tell you his name in this letter, but I'm sure you will both recognize him once I bring him to your estate. Needless to say, this boy is very important, and we need to keep him out of harm's way. He's young, about fifteen, and he needs to be with people who will hopefully make him feel a bit less alien than I seem to. _

_ I know you're going to have questions, but I hope you can understand and find a way to accommodate his unique situation. This would mean a lot to him, and to me, though I doubt either of us would be able to express that. _

_ Yours, _ _   
_ _ Meagan Foster _

As soon as the pen left the paper, Billie felt a wave of pain in her eye, then in her arm, making her pen fall out of her hand and drop to the floor of the ship. When she looked up, she saw the Outsider starting to wake up. Once again, he was only able to sleep for an hour or so at a time. Not that she could blame him, considering that all of their possible places to sleep for the past week had been abandoned apartments or alleyways. Now he was leaning against the cold metal of a boat.

He didn't acknowledge her, he just seemed to be listening to something that she couldn't hear. He hesitated for a moment, sitting up slightly and looking back at the wall he had been resting against, then placing one of his hands on the wall and closing his eyes.

Billie had an idea of what was going on. She shook out the letter to dry the ink, putting it down and moving to the other side of the hull to kneel down next to the Outsider.

"You're hearing the whales, aren't you?" she asked, trying not to startle him.

"They know I'm here," he said simply. "They can sense it."

"And that doesn't concern you?"

"Why would it?" he kept his hand on the wall, but he looked up at her.

The ship only had a few dim electric lights in the cargo hold. Enough to write with but not enough to see into the darkest corners, though it was adequate for Billie to get an adequate look at the boy's eye color. In the void, the contrast of the black stone made it look like his irises were almost white. Maybe it was just the tint of these lights, but she could swear that his eyes were greener now, if only slightly.

"Never mind." Billie didn't feel like getting into her conspiracy theories right now. "But I've been meaning to ask, what do whales have to do with chaos?"

"Nothing." The Outsider took his hand off the wall, threading his fingers together to warm them up again. "Those cultists intended for me to be a god of chaos. Everything about their ritual was calculated for that very purpose. The whales were...a defense mechanism, in a way. I associated them with a feeling of safety, of peace. When I was betrayed by the cult, I lost all my trust in them. I no longer wanted them protecting me inside the void. The whales did that instead."

"I only saw them in the section of the void that you were kept in," she added.

"Yes. They didn't attack you because they knew you came there with good intentions. Or, at the very least, they knew you weren't one of the cultists."

Billie thought about this for a moment, thought about the blood that coated the faces of all those guardians that circled the void. It was almost awe-inspiring to think that that blood was never theirs, but rather the remnants of anyone who had tried to force their physical body into the void before.

"Do you want to talk about what it was like there?" she asked without enough time to stop herself.

The Outsider almost seemed stunned at this. "You saw the state I was in. There's hardly anything to talk about."

She had more than just seen it. She had felt it, in a way. The connections he gave to her through her dead limbs let her understand him as a person more than any other marked person had. Being cast in stone like that, cemented to a pillar of the void to be surrounded by the spirits of his wrongdoers, all the while frozen in a state of protest and anguish, it was hard for her to recount with words.

"That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" Billie finally decided on.

Once again, the boy's expression changed, this time to one that made Billie's blood run cold; an expression of deep resentment and pure anger.

"I was bled out on a stone tablet by a group of people who claimed to be my allies," he said in a monotone that matched his cryptic messages from the void itself, complete with the same ghostly effect behind his words once more. "The first thing I did when I gained my new form was slaughter the people who wronged me. All except the high priest. The death he gave me was as merciful possible, so I allowed him to live. I failed to realize my mistake until he began turning me into stone to contain my fury and rage."

An overhead light flickered, regaining its steady glow as the Outsider settled down again. He took a breath, settling his hand against the hull of the ship once more.

"As I said, there isn't much to talk about," he added calmly, his voice free of any otherworldly tone. "I assumed you came to a similar conclusion already."

"I assumed you'd be pretty angry. Combining that with new-found powers couldn't have ended well for those people."

"It ended for them. To me, that's all that matters."

Billie had her own trouble sleeping after that.


	2. i am the orphan lamb

As it turned out, when someone is used as a sacrifice in a ritual to create a god, that person ends up with a few health problems if their humanity is restored.

It was nearing the end of their first week together, and Billie had started to push the Outsider even further in terms of how much they walked each day. To avoid attention, they hit land a ways away from the actual city of Dunwall, and continued the rest of the trip on foot. Billie pointedly avoided telling him where they were headed (it's not like he couldn't just look up and see for himself), and he made pointedly avoided asking.

None of this was a problem until she noticed him fall behind near the end of a day of traveling, only to turn back to see him collapse in the middle of the street, pale as the grave and probably about to lose what little food she'd managed to get to him that day.

So she'd propped him up in an alley, told him not to move, and hurried off to find something that would help.

"Here," Billie said, about an hour later now, setting down a box of decent food in front of the Outsider.

He looked a little better now. Still pale, still exhausted, but more lucid. His hands still shook slightly when he reached for the box, but at least he was able to keep his head up.

"What is It?" he asked, his voice hoarse in a way that made it seem like he'd definitely gotten sick while she was gone.

"Catch of the day," Billie responded, sitting down next to him. "Hopefully it's cooked well; it better be for the coin it cost me."

He gave her a doubtful look that she didn't appreciate, so she just opened the lid and let the smell of grilled fish speak for itself.

"I don't think it's an illness," she continued. "I think you're just missing some decent nourishment. Getting bled out four thousand years ago does that to someone."

"And this will help?"

"Eating something healthy will make you feel stronger? Yes. Just take it slow, this is more of a meal than anything else I've been able to get you for the past few days."

The boy eyed her, seeming hesitant, but clearly too tired and hungry to argue. He just started eating, taking his time and probably trying his damndest to hide how much he was enjoying this.

Billie felt a twinge of guilt at how bad his condition has gotten. It wasn't as though she never noticed, she just hoped that he could make it to Dunwall tower without keeling over. Clearly her judgement was off. She had never needed to take care of another person before. All this intuition about what to do with an underfed and anemic teenager were just remnants of having to watch her own back when she was living on the streets.

"I'm sorry about this, by the way." Billie was almost surprised that she said this out loud. "You'll be in a more comfortable situation soon."

Billie Lurk is not a mother. She never had any desire to be, for multiple reasons. She had no intention of acting motherly to this boy in any way, shape, or form, and she sincerely hoped that he didn't think of her in any sort of maternal way. Billie Lurk was just an adult woman who was tasked with caring for a teenage boy with a weird history who, if everything went well, would be out of her hands soon enough.

He didn't do her the trouble of responding. That made it easier.

* * *

If there was one thing Billie learned from Daud, it was how to have a subtle flair for the dramatic.

She had already laid out in her mind a plan of attack for how she would present the Outsider to the Kaldwins, a plan which she purposely neglected to relay to him until the last possible moment. Once they were within an hour's walk of the palace, she snuck her way into a closed laundromat, the Outsider's cult attire from the void in a bag over her shoulder. He followed her, confused, impatient, but too unsure of what was going to happen to him to ask any questions. With all the clothes, money, and food Billie had been stealing for him, that might have come across as rude.

The clothes were a dead giveaway, but that was what Billie was counting on. It was almost night, and anyone who noticed the similarity to any painting would just assume they were hitting the ale a bit too hard. The Kaldwins, however, would only need one look at him to understand what was going on if he was wearing these. First, though, they had to stop smelling like low tide and oil.

"This seems...counterproductive." The boy said, looking at Billie quizzically when she handed the clothes back to him afterwards.

"I'm trying to make this easier for both of us," she said simply, pulling a long, all-encompassing cloak off one of the hangers in the store. "Put this on over them. If it's this dark out, that should be all the disguise you'll need."

When he followed her instructions, albeit doubtfully, Billie stored the rest of her own supplies for pickup after she was alone again, and started leading him along the alleys of the city towards Dunwall tower.

Getting to the tower was the easy part. Getting in was another matter entirely.

Billie had kept up correspondence with Emily, informing her that this was the exact day for this exchange to happen. As a result, there were far less guards than usual, something Corvo probably detested, but it made climbing the walls to Jessamine's memorial much easier.

Something about that spot felt wrong, as if Billie didn't deserve to stand over it, but it had been Emily's suggestion. It was far away from any lights, close to the edge of the property, and not in an area that the guards usually patrolled. All things that Billie had considered herself when she and Daud's crew had planned to attack it fifteen years ago.

It almost felt as though Emily planned it this way for that exact reason. She may have accepted Billie's confession and subsequent apology, but that didn't mean she was above being petty.

But Billie didn't waste her energy or attention on worrying about whether or not the empress was still angry at her, she was far more focused on keeping the previous god and overseer of the void itself from slipping off a palace wall and breaking his spine on the rocks below.

The wind tonight wasn't any stronger than usual, but it got more noticable the further up they climbed. Billie was unphased, displacing herself from ledge to ledge and letting down ropes for the Outsider to pull himself up onto whenever she did. There was a chance that her abilities could extend to more than one person, but considering what happened whenever she displaced herself into the same location as another human, she didn't want to risk it. Instead she helped haul the boy up the side of a wall, a little surprised at how light he was.

On top of that, Billie noticed how he was very pointedly avoiding looking down, and how every time the wind jostled him on the rope his knuckles would go white and he would completely freeze.

"If you're really afraid of heights, I should just take you somewhere else," Billie said, offering her living arm down to him as he climbed up the rope one final time.

He didn't respond, silently grabbing her forearm in a vice grip and letting her pull him up over the wall and into the Kaldwin's rooftop garden. He looked shaken and nervous, but not as though he was about to pass out from the relatively high altitude, so that was good enough for her. Billie just patted the Outsider on the shoulder, walking over to the edge again to gather her rope before gesturing for him to follow and starting to walk towards the place where Jessamine had been killed.

Once they reached the edge of the small stone gazebo, the Outsider stopped, his eyes going distant. Billie ignored him, not wanting to hear another lecture about the frailty of life and how death lingered in this place due to the despair of those who had witnessed it, or whatever else he was planning to say.

Luckily, she didn't need to, as there was the sound of a twig snapping nearby and the noise yanked him out of his daze. The both of them turned in its direction, seeing a figure standing in the darkness, two hands raised and a crossbow in one of them.

"Meagan Foster," Emily said, in a slightly teasing voice that made it clear that she wasn't over being lied to on the Dreadful Wale.

"Emily Kaldwin," Billie responded. She wasn't inherently distrustful of Emily, but even so, Billie took a step in front of the Outsider and slightly blocked him with her ruined arm. If nothing else, to indicate that this was the person she wanted smuggled into the palace.

When Emily stepped into the dim light, the look on her face upon seeing Billie's arm made it clear that this was a mistake.

"What happened there?" Emily asked, gesturing with her crossbow towards the gnarled mass of tar and bone that now served as Billie's hand.

"I'm not sure how to answer that, really." Billie drew back, covering that hand with her remaining one. A pause, then she nodded at the Outsider. "He can probably tell it better than I could."

That got Emily's attention. She turned her gaze to the boy instead, her expression softening slightly. He was about the same height as Billie, but his posture and silence through this encounter made it clear that he was nervous nonetheless. He kept the hood of his cloak up, however, and Emily hadn't seen his face well enough yet to know just what he was.

"Do you have a name?" she asked, trying to move closer but stopping once he took a step back from her.

"I haven't for a very long time, but you know who I am."

His response was quiet, but anyone who bore his mark would recognize that voice anywhere. Billie saw Emily's eyes widen in the dim light. Without waiting for confirmation, Emily closed the distance between her and the Outsider and pulled back the hood, probably a little more forcefully than he would have preferred.

She looked as shocked as anyone else would have in this situation. The fact that he was here physically was one thing, but the change in his eyes was almost staggering. The boy with black eyes that the legends had spoke about, that all those paintings had depicted, the songs, the legends, all of it was reduced to a set of green irises so light they were almost stark white.

Slowly, Emily let go of his hood, just staring at him, a gesture that he returned with an expression that mixed guilt with fear.

"How is this possible?" Emily asked, turning towards Billie.

"That is a long story," Billie responded. "I'll explain once Corvo gets here."

* * *

An explanation did little to settle Corvo's shock.

Of course, his shock was relative to how stoic the man usually was.

He asked the questions Billie would have expected. A gruff "what residual powers does he have" and "is this permanent" to which she responded with the truth. She hasn't seen any so far, and is anything permanent, really?

Corvo stared Billie down, then saw that she was clearly not to be intimidated by him into giving a more concise answer, he switched his attention to the Outsider.

Back in the void, fifteen years ago, the Outsider had been able to use his powers inherent to being on his own terrain to make himself seem more imposing. This mostly meant levitating a foot or so off the ground to seem taller to the people he brought in. He couldn't do that with corvo now, leaving him uncomfortably below eye level. It only made this more awkward, a feeling he knew he was exaggerating by not speaking.

"Why here?" Corvo finally said, the tone in his voice and the slight furrow of his brow almost making the Outsider flinch.

"My second choice would be sending him off to live with the Howlers," Billie said. "But knowing Palo, he would just kill the kid to see if he was the real thing."

"Here is fine." Emily interjected as she stepped between Corvo and the Outsider. Corvo started to say something else, but Emily just pointed a stern finger at his face. "My empire, my rules."

"So you didn't ask to come here," Corvo stated, almost phrased like a question but clearly not meant as one.

"I had no say in where I was taken, Corvo," the boy responded a little more timidly than he would have preferred. He shook his head then, cleared his throat, and stood up a bit taller. "As it stands right now, you and Emily are the only living people who wear my mark. You're the only people who can be trusted with my rehabilitation."

Emily gave her father a look, which Corvo did not reciprocate. Instead, the royal protector stepped closer to the Outsider, looking him over, walking in a circle around him while the Outsider just stood there and said nothing, looking extremely uncomfortable.

"I've already decided." Intervening again and this time clearly less patient with her father's suspicions, Emily grabbed Corvo by the upper arm to stop him. "With all the good he's done for us, I think it's more than fair to let him recuperate here, at least temporarily. If there's any danger, I'll handle it."

She turned back to give the Outsider a smile that was a mix of reassuring and some other emotion he couldn't quite read right now. Probably excitement.

"If you're sure," Corvo muttered, and Emily released him to put her hand on the Outsider's shoulder instead.

"I can take you to one of the guestrooms," Emily told him. "I don't want to seem impolite, but you look like you need some sleep. Father can direct any more questions at Meagan."

Billie nodded at Corvo. "If I've been traveling with this kid for a week and a half without my life being in danger, I think you two will be fine."

This seemed to put Corvo's doubts at ease for now (or maybe he was more convinced by Emily's determination), and he let the debate end if only to be brought up at another time. Emily took the opportunity to guide the Outsider back towards the building. Perhaps a bit faster than he would have preferred, but he was starting to take what Emily had said into consideration. He was exhausted, and the thought of a bed—a _real_ one, not some bare mattress in an alleyway—was starting to sound almost too appealing.

Emily's footsteps were quick and almost silent, so steady that her upper body barely moved with each step forward. She was a bit hard to keep up with, even more so when her own excitement got to her and she was suddenly ten feet further than she had been just a second ago, a trail of purple and onyx energy vanishing in her wake.

This made the Outsider stop in his tracks, his blood running cold for a moment.

"You still have your abilities," he said, his voice not properly conveying how much this worried him.

Emily turned back to him, looking confused at the statement. "Am I not supposed to?"

"No, it's…" There was a railing for a stairway next to the Outsider, and this sudden onslaught of concern and dread made it necessary for him to grab it to lean onto. "I don't know. I gave Meagan powers, but no mark. I was less surprised that she kept her abilities, since she carried a piece of the void with her, but the marks are different. They're _connections_ to the void, not relics of the void itself. I thought...they would stop working, or at least weaken slightly with me being gone."

Tilting her head to the side, Emily lifted up her left hand to examine the symbol burned onto the back of it, then shrugged.

"It doesn't seem any lighter, like it's faded," she stated. "But it's like you said, my father and I are the only ones left who were marked. If we're the only ones left who still have the void's magic, that isn't the worst possible scenario."

"You're right. It just gives me a lot to think about."

Emily gave him another smile, this time calmer than before, and opened the door next to her. "Well then, you can think about it with an expensive down pillow under your head."


	3. i am anxiety

When the Outsider awoke the next day, it was after a proper night's sleep. Rather, it was a great deal longer than a proper night's sleep. He and Billie had arrived at the estate just after the sun had gone down, but it was already mid-day by the time Emily threw open the curtains and let the sun's light fill the room.

"The staff want to meet you," she announced. "Father and I came up with a story for you, and a name."

"How long was I asleep?" The boy was slow to respond, still groggy, and not at all used to the feeling.

"Eighteen hours. We told everyone to leave you be. You were awake for four millennia, after all."

He simply took a deep breath, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and slowly sitting up. When he moved his hands away, Emily noticed that the dark circles had already started to fade. Oddly enough, his irises seemed to be darker. They had been an inhumanly pale green when she first saw them, but now the small flecks of brown in the center had spread, changing his eyes to be closer to hazel.

It wasn't just his eyes. The Outsider's almost ghostly pale skin had regained some of its color, and even the gaunt in his cheekbones had lessened some. Maybe it was the fact that he was wearing some of the palace's silk nightclothes, but he seemed far less neglected.

He even seemed younger. Before, only his voice would have given away the fact that he was a teenager. The void had seemed to age him over the years, slowly, but to the point where it was no longer subtle when she met him. But now he seemed to be on the path to looking his real age again.

Breakfast would probably help with that even further.

"By the way," Emily added. "Your name is Damian Kaldwin now."

* * *

A god could exist beyond the human realm for generations and still never outlive the tangible weight of an awkward silence.

For all the proclaimed excitement that the servants held towards meeting the newest Kaldwin to be pulled into the palace like a stormcloud, they all were at a loss for words once Emily and Corvo actually brought him into the downstairs library where they had gathered. It didn't help that he was still in the nightclothes he had been given (or rather, that he was borrowing from Emily), as Corvo had gotten rid of the clothes he had been wearing in the void.

"Anything to make you look less like the paintings," Corvo had said. "We have a tailor who can make you something else."

This tailor, along with all the other staff, was now staring at 'Damian Kaldwin' as he stood rigid in front of the doorway. He wasn't used to having this many eyes on him at once. Maybe Billie really had pushed that knife into his chest. All these gazes boring into him felt virtually the same as that.

Eventually, once it became clear that nobody was going to be the first to speak, a member of the staff leaned in towards her neighbor, trying to be discrete, but the conversation she started was easy enough to hear.

"He does bear a resemblance to her, doesn't he?"

"Yes, I see it," the other staff member replied. "The poor thing. She can't have been a good mother."

"Just look at him," another chimed in, putting less effort into being quiet. "He's practically skin and bones."

The Outsider turned back to the two real nobles in the room, visible confusion on his face that he hoped the two of them would resolve. Corvo responded with a glance at Emily and an obvious 'you didn't tell him, did you?' expression. Emily shrugged and stepped forward to address her court directly.

"Sorry, he's not inclined to talk to people he doesn't know very well," she explained, giving an excuse for his long silence. "But as I told you this morning, this is Delilah's son. He's made it very clear to my father and I that he has no positive feelings towards her, and is even willing to publicly denounce her once we present him to the people."

At the mention of Delilah, the Outsider's jaw visibly tightened. The very idea of pretending to be related to her made made him sick to his reanimated stomach.  Delilah had been a scar on the most ancient part of the void for years, tipping the balance of chaos in the world to suit her needs. He never should have spoken to her, never let her know that the void truly existed.

But it was too late for that now. Delilah was gone, and he was no longer a god.

He took a slow breath, letting go of the tension and committing to the fiction that had been planned out for him.

"I'll gladly denounce her," he said simply, pulling a face of pure contempt that he didn't really need to fake. "That woman was evil, even before her black magic."

A chef near the edge of the room scoffed slightly, gathering the courage to make her way over to him and survey him more closely. The Outsider, not expecting this, froze in place, accepting the hands she clapped onto his shoulders.

"By the void, let's not interrogate the poor boy," she said, glancing back at her coworkers before turning to him again. "You need some food in you before these fools start asking more questions you don't want to answer."

The other staff members apparently respected her word above the others, because they dropped any further questioning and switched back into service mode, escorting their nobles into the smaller family dining room. This was a special occasion, but clearly not enough to warrant using the large dining hall meant for lavish parties.

The Outsider was all but pushed into sitting down at the head of the table, probably where Emily usually sat, but the aforementioned empress just calmly took a seat at his right hand while her father silently took the chair at his left. Now the situation was even more uncomfortable, as the Outsider could hear kitchen staff barking orders and preparing breakfast for the royal family while he sat atop a cushioned chair while wearing a black silk nightshirt.

Emily, however, had a smirk on her face that she had probably been trying to hide since she woke up that morning. She just stared at her father, who stared back expressionlessly. Then Emily started laughing and the Outsider all but jumped out of his chair.

"I'm sorry, really," Emily said between breaths. "But you can at least appreciate how strange this is."

"I know it's strange," the boy said quietly. "But I wouldn't pass judgment on whether or not it's this funny just yet."

"It's funny," Emily snickered again, trying to hide a grin behind her knuckles. "Because when I was ten, and father told me about his mark—"

"Emily," Corvo tried to interrupt.

"Hush, let me tell him." Emily took another sharp, amused breath. "When I saw the mark, I asked him what you were like. When he said you were just a teenager, I started to think of you as a sort of mysterious older brother. And now that you're here, our roles have reversed. I can treat you like the younger brother I never had."

"Because Jessamine had her hands full with you already," Corvo added, a hint of nostalgia in his voice that was clearly rare enough in itself.

This line of conversation set off a story about Emily's childhood that, frankly, the Outsider had no interest in. He let Corvo and Emily get caught up in their recounting, and he simply tuned them out and instead focused on the sound of dishes moving and pans sizzling and kitchen staff giving orders to each other. The two Kaldwins were able to put this out of their mind already, it was part of their daily routine. While the both of them had gone through hardships because of events that were out of their control, they still came through it all with a palace full of comfort and luxury waiting for them at the end of it.

Being in that sort of situation made the Outsider extremely uncomfortable. He was not at all accustomed to having people to wait on him or attend to his every need (mostly because, for the past four thousand years, he didn't  _ have _ any needs). The fact that he had to live the life of a royal and give no indication that this bothered him as going to take some time for him to adjust to. What little he remembered of his life before godhood certainly added to this feeling of being misplaced as well.

The Outsider did not fully understand who he was, but he knew enough to be sure that he felt out of place among the rich and powerful.

* * *

During breakfast and for quite a bit of time afterward, the boy mulled over the backstory that had been fabricated or him by his new "family." He felt completely neutral about the name itself—though he was fairly certain that it wasn't close to the name he had lost so many years ago—but despite his initial reaction to hearing his apparent relationship with Delilah, he had to admit to himself that it was a good idea. Though most of Dunwall knew about her abilities through the stunts she pulled during her time in power, very few suspected that she was marked by the void. If the Damian Kaldwin ended up displaying any residual powers, those would be blamed on his parentage, not on the fact that he used to be the Outsider.

Somehow, this line of thinking only irritated him further, but he wasn't about to bring that up to either of the Kaldwins. It was too late to change the story now, anyway.

When he came to this conclusion, he realized that he had been wandering aimlessly throughout the palace for the better part of an hour, and that he had just stepped into the throne room. There was no one in it, nobody had any reason to be here today, and something about that isolation almost made it seem peaceful. Of course, the boy knew better. Emily was a good person by this world's standards, but every system of power caused some form of suffering, had some group that gained no benefit from it. For all the help that the current empress had provided, even more areas for improvement remained.

Not even a full day of palace life, and the Outsider was already thinking of how he could reshape Dunwall into a better community from his new position as the cousin of its leader.

He found himself already standing next to the throne, at its right side, opposite of where Corvo usually stood. There was an obvious, nagging temptation to actually sit in it, but that thought was interrupted by a sudden feeling of eyes on his back and another presence in the room.

"There's definitely going to be some political uproar once we tell people about you," Emily said, and her sudden appearance would have made anyone else jump out of their skin. Not the Outsider.

"That can't be avoided, can it?" the boy asked, turning to look behind him at where she had silently reached her way into the room. She clearly enjoyed using her powers more than Corvo did.

Emily shook her head. "More trouble would come from us hiding you. We'll give you a few days to prepare yourself, of course, but the people need to know that you're here."

The Outsider thought this over for a moment, realized her logistics were sound, then spoke up again at the sudden worry creeping over him.

"No one will ask me to rule, will they?" His tone and facial expression made it very clear that the idea of this terrified him.

"Probably not," Emily assured him. "You're younger than me. The task  _ would _ fall to you in the event of my death, but I have no plans to die anytime soon."

The boy just gave her another look, not entirely comforted by her answer but not in the mood to discuss it further. He glanced back down at the throne, dread flowing through him again at the mere suggestion that he could actually be in charge of Dunwall at some point, even if that possibility was slight and far off.

He didn't want to rule anything. He never wanted to have that much responsibility. The void had been his domain, yes, but he ruled it by his own terms and with no other lives on the line when it came to the choices he made inside of it. And while it was always a gamble to give powers to humans among the outside world, what they chose to do with those powers was completely up to them.

The Outsider wanted those in need to look to him for guidance, not leadership.

"I'll leave you to your exploring, then," Emily said, noticing the Outsider's continued silence and blank expression. "Try not to get lost. It's a big house."

There was another whisper of energy as Emily reached her way out of the room again, leaving the boy behind to contemplate his next move. Luckily, another worry overtook the previous one, namely the fact that he would probably need to stand in front of officials and news reporters when he was eventually announced to the city. He would need to prepare statements, answer questions, and continue with the lie that a person he was greatly uncomfortable with while she was alive was related to him by blood. Still, pretending to be related to a witch was far easier than being a ritual sacrifice. He would manage.

The Outsider took a step back from the throne, gave the hall another once-over, taking in its high ceilings and heavy light fixtures, feeling dwarfed in comparison to how massive this single room was, then continued his solo tour of the mansion.

This was going to be a very long adjustment period.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dont think too hard about his fake name i promise it holds no significance to anyone other than me


End file.
